Uncommon space selfie from Mars meanderer

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a dazzling “selfie” taken by the Curiosity Mars wanderer on Tuesday.

In a tweet, the Curiosity group clarified the picture was captured close to the great rock formation named “Mont Mercou” after a mountain in France’s southern region.

“Wish you were here! This selfie was taken in front of ‘Mont Mercou,’ a rock formation that’s 20ft (6m) tall,” JPL posted, “It’s made up of 60 images from my MAHLI camera and 11 images from my Mastcam. Look close enough to spot a new drill hole – my 30th sample to date.”

The selfie, required prior in the month, was posted close by an extra pair of three-dimensional and panoramic shots of the Martian landscape.

In a caption going with the picture, JPL clarified that Curiosity had stitched together various pictures to make the selfie before the 20-foot-tall rock outcrop.

“The panorama is made up of 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover’s robotic arm on March 26, 2021, the 3070th Martian day, or sol, of the mission,” they wrote. “These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or ‘head,’ of the rover on March 16, 2021, the 3,060th Martian day of the mission.”

Interest arrived on Mars’ surface on August 6, 2012.

Noticeable to one side of the wanderer is an opening where its robotic drill sampled a rock named by the researchers as “Nontron” – a town in southeastern France.

Nontron-related nicknames were picked in light of the fact that Mars orbiters distinguished nontronite, a sort of clay mineral, in the region.

In a Tuesday news discharge from JPL, scientists clarified that Curiosity’s drill had “powderized” the Nontron sample before “trickling it into instruments inside the rover.”

The process was fundamental all together for their science team to better understand the rock’s composition and history.

“This area is at the transition between the ‘clay-bearing unit’ Curiosity is departing and the ‘sulfate-bearing unit’ that’s ahead on Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that the rover has been rolling up since 2014,” they wrote.

“Scientists have long thought this transition might reveal what happened to Mars as it became the desert planet we see today,” added JPL.